


The Malevolent Mansion

by AtomMudman



Series: The Awful Orloffs: The Story of a Family [4]
Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket, Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, Get Out (2017), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), Rosemary's Baby (1968), Superman - All Media Types, The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 21:44:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12094047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtomMudman/pseuds/AtomMudman
Summary: A half-serious fourth part to the Awful Orloffs series, which includes my story "The Curse of Orlac," from Tales of the Shadowmen Vol. 14: Coup de Grace (Dec. 2017, Black Coat Press). This is a tale in which Count Olaf tries to rob the wrong family; or, wherein the Armitage family receives a very unusual guest. *Warning*: Significant spoilers for Get Out contained herein. Annotations at the end point out the references.





	1. Chapter 1

It would be a challenging thing indeed for him to lay his hands on the Armitage fortune, but for now he believed he could still do it.

In this instance, “him,” “his,” and “he,” are words which here mean, “the man who was presently referring to himself as Count Feodor Orloff IV.” He wasn't entirely sure if there was a Feodor Orloff III, much less a Feodor Orloff II, but he knew he was very distantly related to the real Count Orloff who lived in Russia a rather absurdly long time ago. That, and the fact that he was a Count of his own merit, helped justify the name. All the same, the man calling himself Count Feodor Orloff IV was in more trouble than he was used to. Both his wrists were bound to the arms of his chair by thick leather strips, and the wooden seat was firmly rooted to the floor. The Count wasn't a stupid man, but he still insisted on struggling, even when his captors returned to the room— _especially_ when they did.

There was the old man, old Roman Armitage, patriarch of the clan; his son, Dean, who likely thought his ugly beard was superior to the Count's beautiful eyebrows; and Dean's wife Melissa, whose eyes put fear in the Count's heart. They stared at him, and he at them, while he continued to try to work his way out of his bonds. This continued for rather a long time, until at last the Count let his muscles relax, and he flopped back into the chair.

“Well, you can't blame me for trying,” he sighed.

“Do or die time, I believe,” Dean said then, seemingly without regards to him. “Do we do it to him? Or do we wait?”

“Do what?” asked the Count. “What do you mean?”

“Let me talk to him. I have some questions for him,” Melissa said. She walked forward, and then leaned to make eye contact with her prisoner.

“Hi. I'm Missy.”  
“I know. We've met.”

“You told us your name was...Feodor Orloff IV.”  
“ _Count_ Feodor Orloff IV. Of Russia.”

“Your Russian accent is atrocious, Count. It's like you're hardly putting effort into it at all.”  
He took offense, but hid it. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

The woman sniffed, grinning widely at him. “I think you think you can fool a lot of people. You come to one of our parties, as our guest, and try to pull the wool over our eyes. But there's something special about you. Some significance. I know it.”

“Well, I don't know it. I insist, I don't know anything.”

The woman seemed to take on a bemused expression, as if she were back up in that dull parlor playing Parcheesi. It made the Count sick to his stomach.

“You know, not many people can make it out of where you escaped from.”  
“Oh, that Sunken Place thing?” he asked. “Getting out was easy. I know all the old hypnotist parlor tricks.”  
“You do, do you? Even those picked up by someone who went above and beyond her doctoral program, evidently. Curiouser, and curiouser, said little Alice.”  
The Count went silent. He reflected on this lady's hypnosis skills and confessed they were rather impressive; she'd managed to paralyze him long enough to bring him down here. He barely remembered what they'd done to him, but his friendship with good old Dr. Orwell had done him well. She was a real genius of the art: a student of Dr. Yen Lo, who in turn studied under Murder Legendre, who in turn studied under Svengali. He shook off “the Sunken Place” with relative ease, but now they probably suspected he was after their fortune. Their sweet, delicious fortune. He had seen the number, heard the estimates, and now, even now, he was starting to salivate—

“You did murmur something interesting when you were under, though. Something about your father. You said his name was Byron Orlac.”

The Count started at that. “No, no, you see, my father's name was Count Feodor Orloff III. That is why I am Count Orloff IV—basic mathematics, you see? Even in Russia, we have better math than you.” He wondered why he'd said a thing like that, when he was in that trance. Byron Orlac, that old hack actor, was a relative of his, sure, and probably where he'd gotten the acting blood, but Byron Orlac wasn't his father. Byron Orlac had survived the Count's childhood. Maybe someday the Orlac family was worth going after—after all, Byron Orlac's mother was the heir to the von Leppe fortune.

“You're not fooling anyone,” Missy said then, interrupting his thoughts. “We don't know quite who are, but once we do some research on that tattoo on your ankle I'm sure we'll dig something up.”  
“Lots of Russians have tattoos, haven't you heard?” He hoped this was working, but he already knew it wasn't. He hadn't taken proper pains to hide that old tattoo. “Besides, you've no business inspecting the ankle of a nobleman.”  
Missy made a small sound, like a gasp. Only it wasn't a gasp—it was a laugh. A small laugh, preceding the burst of laughter that erupted from her and her family members. They laughed for a long time and the Count felt himself grow pale. When they were done laughing, Missy stepped aside, and Roman Armitage moved towards him, tall and imposing even in old age.

“Do you think you're better than us, Count Orloff, just because you've got that title?” he asked.

“A Count is a person to be respected,” was the best Orloff could conjure up. (The way Armitage spoke his name, his words lisping somewhat, it sounded like he already knew his real name—his main name.)

“I'll tell you, I deserve respect too. I was in the 1936 Olympics, in Berlin.” Armitage spoke as if he recounted his story often. “It was there I met Dr. Serafin, who opened me up to the world of science. Those were glorious times, I'll tell you. I was raised in a religious world. You know, it's funny, my father, Steven Armitage, who raised me religious: he named me Roman, and an old church friend of ours ended up naming his son Steven after my dad. But that kid, Steven Marcato, he changed his name to Roman Castevet later down the line. He's my dad and me in one person, heh! Lost track of what he was doing recently, though...”  
“Does this tangent have a  _point_ ?” asked Count Orloff.

“Don't interrupt,” Roman replied gently. “To go back—I was an Olympic athlete, so what I'm saying is mind your manners, because I've done things you'll never be able to do. In any case, it's good I brought up the interest in science I picked up when I was out in Germany. Because I'm going to level with you, seeing as we're the same shade and all. I want to let you in on our little secret society.”  
“Oh, joy.” The Count knew a thing or two about secret societies.

“Dad, are you sure that's a good idea?” Dean Armitage asked.

“Well, we know what to do with him if he doesn't want to come on board.” And the old man grinned as he began to speak.

“In the early days, I took to studying our subjects, as you will know them, I examined the so-called 'zombies' which haunted islands like San Sebastian and Voodoo Island. I went to Mora Tau and the Valley of the Zombies, risking my neck all the while. I studied the methods of voodoo with a woman named Ann Christoff. I figured there was a link between these mindless brutes and what we set out to do.”  
“Which is...?”  
“Hush, I'm getting to that. I eventually realized that hypnotism was more reliable to the cause, when it came to restraining and imprisoning the subject, than the drugs used in voodoo ceremonies. We tried using drugs in the early days but it...made the experience uncomfortable. A full voodoo overhaul would ruin the body, make it unsuitable for our use.”  
“I still don't know what in blazes you mean.”  
“ _Hush_. Now, we made a breakthrough in the case of Dr. Max Kirschner. Using science first pioneered by a scientist named Roger Girard, we transplanted the head of a white man onto the body of a black man. With the original head still intact, of course.”  
The Count had no response to this.

“But we wanted more. We didn't want to live as two-headed freaks. To obtain the lives we wanted, we needed to transplant the _brain_. Another miracle struck me, struck our Order—I found some old notes belonging to the Ultra-Humanite.”  
“The Ultra-Who?”  
“The Ultra-Humanite. He was a criminal a good time back...in any case, he was a brilliant brain surgeon, second only to my Dean. The Ultra-Humanite's notes patched in what I learned from the notes taken from my grandfather's book collection. My grandfather, Count Orloff, was a man by the name of Henry Armitage, and he was the librarian at the Miskatonic Library. One of the documents in his personal possession detailed the creatures known as the Fungi from Yuggoth. They and the Ultra-Humanite both knew how to remove a brain from someone without killing the consciousness inside. We were finally able to put it all together. Except—”

“Except?” He let the words fall from his mouth, even though he didn't know what he was asking about.

“—except we've yet to find someone adept enough in the hypnotic arts to keep someone fully under control while the Coagula takes over.”

“The Coagula?”  
“The process we were going to subject you to. Ordinarily we like someone a bit darker—that's our end goal, at least—but I'm getting old, Count. You're not young, but you're younger than me. We were thinking I was going to have to take you over...”

“Wait, you mean...graft yourself into my skull?” He couldn't sustain his flimsy accent now, and those tremendous eyebrows were raised high.

“Oh, yes. I intend to keep on living as I see fit. Now, ordinarily the Coagula is reserved for men and women of a, uh, of a certain descent, as we're meant to build up over—Coagulate, as it were—the minds we dominate, with that particular line of, uh, descent being easier to dominate. Of course, there was the other etymology for 'Coagula'...”  
Dean laughed now. “I remember you telling me a long time ago, Dad. You and Dr. Serafin got drunk one night over talks about one of your zombies, and you thought of naming your whole line of zombies after the one you were talking about. His name was 'Koalaga' but the doctor was so drunk he kept slurring it as 'Koagala'...”  
“...and then he started rambling on about Rudolf Hess, who had once shown him the alchemical phrase 'Solve et Coagula.' 'Break Down and Build Up.' That was his divine revelation, as he would have it,” Roman Armitage finished. “Our victims are left as zombies at first, Count Orloff, and that is when we move in. We gain their strength, their status, everything else they possess. That is the nature of our secret society. You are of the white race as we are, so we are going to offer you a chance to join our Order of the Coagula.”  
The stone room was silent for a while.

Then Count Orloff began laughing.

“You must be kidding me. I'm not interested in sewing myself onto some skinhead group. I have no time for mysticism and nationalism,” he said. “All I'm interested in, Armitages, is money, and I suspect that you're not going to exactly give me fair shares of your millions just for signing on with your little cult. So it would be best to let me loose so we can get on with calling it even, and all will be well.”  
“Oh, please. We recognize our little Koalagas as our betters. That's why we want to join them. But if you're disinterested, Count Olaf,” Roman said, his voice becoming more serious, “we won't stop you.”

“Really?” They did know his “real” name, but he wouldn't let that bug him. Still, he couldn't stop himself from sweating. Somehow, there was an impression that washed over him that they knew his family tree—knew that an uncle of his or some such had something to with zombies.  
“There's just one thing I want to do first. I need to make sure you won't talk.” Missy was the one to say this.

“What's that?” He hadn't heard her.  
“Just a second,” she whispered.

 

At the doorway, Count Feodor Orloff IV was on his way out of the Armitage house. He was looking over the shoulder of his hostess, drinking in the riches he was missing out on. So many rooms to this house—and such old world charm. It was perfect for someone like he, who would properly appreciate it.

“It was a splendid party,” he lied. “I'm just disappointed I couldn't steal your fortune.”  
“What was that?” Missy Armitage asked him innocently, as she shook his hand.

“I said we'll have to do it again sometime.”

She grinned, and nodded, an idiot as they usually were. Wealth, thankfully, dulled the senses of the wealthy, and that made it so easy to take their fortunes sometimes. However, today, here, he had failed. Even the greatest failed—even Nixon had his Waterloo. On the drive back he was sure he could weave a fine tale to tell his henchpeople, to explain why he came back emptyhanded.

There was just one thing that bothered him, though. He briefly remembered an orange-lit stone room, perhaps a space underground. There was a name being whispered to him—no, which he was whispering. He spoke this name like he was asleep, or underwater somehow. It was the name “Georgina.”

...and someone was there, wasn't there, beside him? Listening in, catching that name. He didn't know why he spoke it. He knew a couple of Georginas, at least as far as he remembered. He seemed to remember the name of Georgina Orwell, but what was her significance in his life? He was sure it would come back to him at some point in the future, but for now he didn't know why he'd be telling someone her name. It was like her relevance to him had been cut out of his brain temporarily.

“Temporarily” is a word which here means, “Count Olaf would remember what he'd forgotten when it came time to look up Dr. Orwell again a few fires down the line.” For now, he left the Armitage mansion with confidence that his next try would be more successful, his uncertainty over abandoning their fortune only a minor twitch.

Missy smiled his false smile back at him. Once the Count turned his back, he let his own smile drop, and he fantasized about this place burning down someday.

 


	2. Annotations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Annotations to the nods to other works made in "The Malevolent Mansion."

The story's “protagonist,” Count Feodor Orloff IV, is actually Count Olaf, from Lemony Snicket's _A Series of Unfortunate Events_. The Count he cites, Feodor Orloff I, is the evil Russian count from John R. Carling's _The Shadow of the Czar_ (1902). Feodor Orloff III is from _12 to the Moon_ (1960), while Feodor Orloff II (Olaf's zombie-making uncle) has his life outline in the other stories of this series.

 

Roman, Dean, and Missy Armitage, their house, the Sunken Place, and the Coagula are all from Jordan Peele's  _Get Out_ (2017). As revealed in that film, the white Armitages transfer their brains into the bodies of young, healthy black people, in apparent revenge for Roman Armitage losing out to Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics.

 

Dr. Georgina Orwell is also from  _A Series of Unfortunate Events_ , having appeared in the fourth book,  _The Miserable Mill_ (2000). Dr. Yen Lo is from Richard Condon's  _The Manchurian Candidate_ (1959); Murder Legendre is from the film  _White Zombie_ (1932); Svengali is the titular figure from George du Marier's  _Svengali_ (1895). All of these characters are sinister hypnotists.

 

Byron Orlac is the actor seen in the Peter Bogdanovich film  _Targets_ (1968); he is another relative of the Orloff family. That his mother was a von Leppe refers to the Baron von Leppe from the film  _The Terror_ (1963), played by Byron Orlac actor Boris Karloff; in  _Targets_ , Orlac watches himself (Karloff) play von Leppe in  _The Terror_ .

 

Dr. Serafin is the Nazi scientist from Peter Lear's _Goldengirl_ (1977); his story is expanded elsewhere in this series. Steven Marcato/Roman Castevet is the head of the Satanic cult from Ira Levin's _Rosemary's Baby_ (1967).

 

San Sebastian is the voodoo-haunted island seen in the movies  _I Walked with a Zombie_ (1943),  _The Ghost Ship_ (1943), and  _Zombies on Broadway_ (1945). Voodoo Island is from the film  _I Eat Your Skin_ (1964). Mora Tau is from  _Zombies of Mora Tau_ (1957), while the Valley of the Zombies is from the 1946 film  _Valley of the Zombies_ . Ann Christoff is the voodoo priestess from the film  _Serpent Island_ (1954).

 

Dr. Max Kirschner is the racist scientist whose head is transplanted onto the body of a black man in the film  _The Thing with Two Heads_ (1972). Dr. Roger Girard conducted a similar grafting experiment in  _The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant_ (1971). The Ultra-Humanite is a Superman villain, who began fighting the Man of Steel in  _Action Comics_ #13 (Jun. 1939); he is renowned for transplanting his brain into other people's bodies.

 

Henry Armitage of the Miskatonic Library was created by H.P. Lovecraft and appeared in “The Dunwich Horror” (1928). The Fungi from Yuggoth, or Mi-Go, were also created by Lovecraft; their brain removal experiments were shown in  _The Whisperer in Darkness_ (1930).

 

“Koalaga” is Kalaga, the main zombie from _Zombies on Broadway_ , likely the same as the zombie “Carrefour” from _I Walked with a Zombie_.

 

Rudolf Hess (1894-1987) was the Deputy Fuhrer of Nazi Germany until his capture in 1941. He had occult and alchemical beliefs, as a number of high-ranking Nazis had a tendencies to do. In fact, when he was held in British captivity, spymaster Ian Fleming considered calling in Aleister Crowley to decipher some of his strange, possibly occult remarks.

 


End file.
